Belgians Ask, Could Your Next Priest Be You?

More than 6,000 Belgian Catholics have signed a manifesto urging their bishops to let lay people celebrate Sunday services in parishes left without priests due to a severe shortage of vocations in the Church. More than 200 priests are among signatories of the manifesto launched two weeks ago in Flanders, the traditionally Catholic Dutch-speaking part of Belgium, one of the organisers told Reuters.

The initiative echoed a grass-roots movement in Austria, where 2,000 Catholics — including 361 priests — called in June  for lay-led Masses and the ordination of married men and women to maintain parishes that no longer have a priest. “We Flemish believers urge our bishops to break through the impasse we have landed in,” declared the Dutch-language manifesto entitled “Believers have their say”.

“It’s time for the Church to open its functions to people who are not only celibate men,”  Mark Deweerdt, a layman among the 12 priests and parishioners who drew up the document, told Reuters.